


Wanderlust

by esama



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Do not repost, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22600774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: When Sam headed for the incinerator, he left his odradek behind
Comments: 24
Kudos: 377





	Wanderlust

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Nimadge

"… so he really is gone, then?"

Deadman sighs, considering the assortment of gear in front of him, laid out on what was Sam's bed. The porter had not taken much with him – almost nothing, really. He'd left behind his weapons, tools, materials, whole assortment of grenades… everything. Which in and of itself isn't so unusual – Sam tend to empty out his inventory every now and then, but… the fact that the cargo harness is amongst the things left behind is more telling than anything else. He hadn't even brought the odradek.

Sam had literally left Bridges and Central Knot City behind with nothing but the clothes on his back… and his baby, of course.

Beside him Die-Hardman runs a hand over his short shorn hair and sighs, shaking his head. "Pity," he says. "There were things I wanted to discuss with him at length. There were things I… wanted to tell him. Hell, I'm not sure I ever properly thanked him. Wish he could've waited, a day or two."

Deadman folds his arms, feeling a twinge of guilt over his own involvement in Sam's departure. Sam couldn't have waited, with Lou, and he couldn't have just vanished the way he has, if Deadman hadn't taken his cuffs offline. Deadman's guilty of that, at least – but not sorry in the slightest. "I think he was done waiting on people," he says, shaking his head. "He did a lot, more than anyone could have, or would have, running our errands with little rest in between deliveries. Anyone would be tired."

"Anyone would," Die-Hardman agrees and casts him a glance. "And you don't know where he might've gone?"

Deadman presses his lips together and shakes his head. "Do you want me to look for him?" he asks, casting the man a glance. He would do it, if it was a presidential order. It would be the most half assed effort he would put into _anything_ , he'd do everything in his power to fail, but he'd do it.

Die-Hardman considers him and then looks at the gear in front of them again. "No," he says. "No, he's made his wishes here rather obvious, hasn't he? And don't think I don't know you'd sabotage that search right from the get go."

Deadman feels blood drain from his face, but Die-Hardman only sighs, amused and rueful. "Sam is free to go, free to do whatever he wants from here on out – we won't hold him back. But if he ever comes back…"

"He might," Deadman says, maybe a bit too hopeful, all things considered. "He's made connections here, in Bridges, in the UCA. He might come back, one day…"

"And if he does, we will give him the welcome he deserves," Die-Hardman says and clasps his hands behind his back. "For now I fear we will have to do our errands ourselves, and perhaps that's just for the best. There's a lot of work ahead of us, and we shouldn't rely on others to do it for us, anymore. Sam has paved the roads for us – it'll be a shame not to use them."

With that said, the President of the United Cities of America turns to leave, his pace almost ponderous as he moves towards the door. Deadman glances after him and then unfolds his arms, a little uneasy but mostly relieved. Clearing his throat he asks, "What should I do with this?" he asks, motioning to Sam's gear. "Recycle it?"

Die-Hardman hesitates, glancing at him over his shoulder. He hums. "Do… what you feel best," he says then, nodding like it's a decision he's making. "Yes, do what you feel is the best, Deadman. It's certainly not me he left them for."

Deadman shifts his footing awkwardly and the President steps out, the automated doors closing behind him. Left alone in Sam's room, Deadman considers the assortment of gear – none of which he has much of a use for. Most of it's printed anyway, the weapons, the tools… only unique thing here is the cargo harness and the odradek. It's even got a handmade talisman hanging off it – a little windmill.

Deadman marks the room down as _to be cleared_ , which would have cleaning staff recycle everything in it, leaving behind a blank slate, ready for another room to be printed in its place.

The cargo harness he takes with him as he leaves.

* * *

Sam's odradek was an old model, nearly seven years old. The newer models are more stream lined with smoother movement, less noise and with less memory-intensive functions, but though Deadman had offered to replace his odradek with a newer version, Sam had rejected the idea.

"I like the sound of this one," he said with a shrug. Which is fair enough, Deadman muses. The thing sounds a bit like a digital heart attack when it scans, it's rather intense really – and the pulse it sends out is nearly strong enough to pierce through walls. There's something to be said about brute strength, even when it comes to scanning.

Deadman does a basic maintenance on the odradek in his spare time, just in case, before taking a look at the scanner's programming and memory. For such an old machine it's in tip top condition – though the memory is almost used up. Turns out, the thing doesn't automatically purge old data – it's all stored up in its memory chip, until deleted by user. Might've been another preferred feature of Sam's – the man did go through same routes often, and not having to scan the terrain every time must've come in handy.

Out of curiosity and general sense of redundancy, Deadman downloads the data on the odradek and backs it up trice over, before going about poking around with a copy. The odradek scanned topographic maps, and it would be interesting to see some of the places Sam had gone through…

It takes a bit of tinkering – the programming is rather old – but Deadman has gotten a bit better with these things over the last year, and after about hour or so of work gets the data out – and laid out onto the map. It's rather impressive, the result – the map lights up not only along the route of Knots and waystations, but all around them, forming a very nearly complete three-dimensional map of the country…

Deadman blinks and then leans back as he realises what he has.

It's not complete, Sam had only covered about 45% of the country during his travels. But it _is_ a three-dimensional map – not only that, but an _up to date one_. A high definition, topographical terrain map, the likes of which they hadn't had in _years_ , not since they lost their last few satellites…

Of course, they all _knew_ what state the country is in, they know what kind of devastation is out there, the long stretches of wasteland, the ravines, the holes in the world. But they know it only in bits and pieces – in photographs and local area scans done near cities and various waystations. Nothing like this, though. They haven't had a full picture in… in decades, now. And sure, this one is missing some 55% of the nation as a whole, but it's still more than they've had so far.

And it's not just a top down map either – this is _odradek_ data. Which means…

Deadman stands up and copies the data into a memory chip, before hurrying out.

It's late in the evening now, and most of the facility has gone home – there's only the evening shift now, and they're making their leave. This gives Deadman an easy entry into an empty chiraltorium, already powered down for the night. Deadman accesses it's systems quickly with his access code, and then begins working on feeding the data to the projectors.

It's nearly another hour of tinkering, before the projectors take the data of the old, nearly obsolete odradek. Deadman quickly punches in coordinates, and obligingly the chiraltorium spits out a chiralgram as accurate to the scans as the scan had been to Sam's eye.

Deadman looks up as he finds himself in the perfect rendition of the heart-shaped lake, just outside Heartman's lab – something he's never seen in real life. He'd seen it on a map, sure, he'd seen pictures – but as the chiralgram version of mountains spread out around him and the ceiling gives away to frozen blue sky, it's like he's there, in person – standing in snow rather than on metal floor, in real life.

Of course he knows scanners like the odradeks can do this – that's what most of them are _for_ … but who has ever made a scan like this? It's not detailed just to the close range, the 50-100 meters that odradeks usually are limited by – because _Sam_ hadn't been limited by it. The mountains were recorded too, picture perfect, because _Sam had climbed them_ , he had gone up those mountains, and he'd scanned them. He scanned the valleys, the ravines, the slopes, everything.

45% of the country.

"Incredible, Sam," Deadman murmurs, looking up to Heartman's lab and almost feeling the frozen mountain air on his face, that's how convincing the scan is. "Just incredible."

* * *

After some tinkering with the code and smoothing out some bugs of the final product, Deadman uploads the map to the chiral network. It would speed along a lot of construction projects, sure – but it would offer other benefits too.

Before Sam, before everything, Deadman hadn't seen much of the outside world. He hadn't wanted to, and he hadn't dared to – and there had really been no reason. The world outside was dangerous, with BTs, with timefall, why would he ever go out there, when all the infrastructure is built mostly underground? All his life Deadman had spent indoors, only seeing glimpses of the world outside during rare transit up-top, and not really even wanting to go outside.

Then there was Sam, and that doomed attempt at the mountain cabin, the less said of it the better, really, but he'd seen _outdoors_. He'd been drowning in adrenaline and panic, and scared shitless, and the weather had been trying it's damndest to kill him, but he'd seen outside, he'd seen mountains, and they'd been beautiful.

There lives fifty, sixty thousand people in Centra Knot – majority of whom had never seen the outside world, and who would probably never set their foot outside the city's structures, its protective walls. It's the same for most other cities, settlements, prepper shelters in between – a minuscule, infinitesimal percentage of the population would ever even look outside the gates of a distro centre. And all they had to go on concerning the outside world were pictures and faded holograms.

By the end of the second hour, the map has been accessed one thousand times. By the third hour, it's up to ten thousand. By the end of the day, it's been viewed hundred thousand times, with the number of active viewers peaking at little over forty thousand at a time.

"Great job," Die-Hardman says, later, when Deadman comes across him in the presidential chiraltorium. The Map – which by then has earned its capital title – is active in the room, showing a scene of another incredible view. There's the incinerator at their back, standing on a plateau that faces a terrible drop down to a rocky valley below, with mountains and falls around them – and wide open expanse in front of them. In the distance, there's a crater, inside which gravity has been reversed and slowed, and rubble floats slowly up to the sky.

Central Knot.

"Sam's odradek?" Die-Hardman asks, glancing at him. "I assume that's where you got the file."

"The programming was astonishingly robust," Deadman agrees, peering at the crater. Mother of God, he hadn't realised how _big_ it was. Had Sam really gone all the way down there, too? He would've had to, for it to be on the Map… "The odradek recorded everything Sam scanned and saved it. There was very little data loss."

Die-Hardman hums, watching the crater, his expression unreadable. "Intellectually, you know that there's world out there," he muses. "Intellectually, you know it has changed and keeps on changing. But to see it for yourself…"

Deadman glances at him, just barely stifling the urge to arch a brow at the man. Die-Hardman used to talk a big game about what was out there – Deadman's heard the records of the man talking to Sam during his journey. It always sounded like Die-Hardman knew everything about everything, so thoroughly informed about the state of the world that nothing went past him.

To see the guy now, looking like he's seeing the world for the first time, Deadman has to wonder how much of that was pure bravado.

"This will be a great tool in rebuilding," Die-Hardman says, clearing his throat and turning away from the crater. "I've had the file copied and stored on private servers so that UCA architects and engineers can begin working on plotting out places for potential roads. Building one up to the incinerator is paramount, and will be the first priority – speeding corpse disposal along will make everyone in this region safer."

"I agree," Deadman nods. "It's a good start."

"Engineers in South Knot are also working with the Map to see what they can salvage from the destroyed parts of the city – no one was sure how much of it survived, since… no one dared to go in and look," Die-Hardman says, ruefully. "Too many BTs, even hardened porters with BBs didn't dare to. Sam, however, has scanned the area in perfect detail – including several locations with heavy BT populations."

Deadman hums. "Of course – since he used the odradek with his BB attached, it would have scanned the BTs too," he murmurs. He hadn't even thought to look into those areas. "That might prove invaluable."

"No doubt," Die-Hardman agrees and glances around before looking up at the incinerator. "Of course BTs might appear anywhere where people die, and they can shift and move with the Timefall… but it's certainly something."

The Map brings forth new advancements, much like a lot of other things Sam had brought them and done for them. Things are being built upon the groundwork the porter had laid out – and it reflects on the real world. Things plotted and planned in simulation start being built outside, by Bridges Porters – and by Fragile Express. Trade routes are being set in stone, sometimes literally.

Fragile herself takes part in it – Bridges engages her in a contract, which she seems to accept more out of curiosity than anything. Deadman watches her progress on the chiral network, as she lays out a line of timefall shelters and a couple of safehouses at Bridges' behest, moving from Port Knot to the distribution centre, and from there to the waystation. It takes her all of half a day to finish the chain of safe zones all the way to Capital Knot.

"The Map helps," she comments, motioning to her new Bridges Cuffs. "I downloaded the route and knew just where to jump."

"You haven't travelled in those parts before?" Deadman asks, surprised.

"Only in a way," Fragile admits, activating the Map on her cuffs and motioning to the rocky terrain between Port Knot and the plains. "This whole area is covered by BTs, but they don't reach the highest points. I jumped from peak to peak, never went down to their level."

"Clever," Deadman says, nodding.

"These days I don't do even that much – I just jump from city to city," Fragile admits, smiling, and closes the Map. "But on shorter jumps I can carry more cargo without fear of losing it in between. So what are the shelters for?"

"Groundwork for a road infrastructure," Deadman admits. "As soon as they can get the materials together, we're going to have work crews lay down autopavers and begin establishing roads – we've already started on one up to the incinerator."

"Ah. Makes sense," the porter says. "And it will take weeks, so you need shelters for the workers."

"Months, probably," Deadman agrees. "We can't all be Sam Porter Bridges."

Fragile smiles at that, amused. "Wouldn't that be a world," she murmurs, unfolding her umbrella and resting the handle against her shoulder. "Sam made the Map, right?"

"I got it from his odradek, yeah," Deadman agrees. "Incredible, isn't it?"

"Mm," she agrees. "It has all the preppers in a tizzy. Haven't seen them this excited since Sam was building the roads – something's gonna come out of it, probably."

"You think it will get people to go outdoors?" Deadman asks, wondering. He'd felt the urge himself, a little – though without the prospect of meeting Sam out there, there doesn't seem to be much of a point.

"No, doubt it," Fragile says. "But everyone's using the Map. There's one prepper who even set up chiralgram projectors around their shelter, and built up a forest there – based on the one by the Windfarm. It was… interesting, going there and walking amidst the trees, all of a sudden."

Deadman arches his brows. He hadn't even realised people might use it that way. "That's interesting," he says, and it _is_ , just on a psychological level. It's a well documented aspect of human psychology, that people not only enjoy but _demand_ greenery for optimal mental conditions – plants are soothing to the human spirit. That's why even Deadman has houseplants, even though he's terrible at keeping them alive. To make a holographic forest…

That's rather inspired.

"Everyone is using the Map," Fragile comments, thoughtful. "And when everyone uses something… that something will change."

Very true. There's already been people delving into the coding of the Map. "Well, we have plenty of copies, and the original files are still as they were when I pulled them from Sam's odradek," Deadman comments. "So if some edits are made to the Map, I daresay we can always return it to original conditions as needed."

Fragile nods thoughtfully, turning the umbrella in her hand. Then she looks at him. "How hard is it to set up a chiraltorium?"

Oh? "You're thinking of building one?" Deadman asks, curious. "But can't you just… go to these places yourself, just Jump over?"

She tilts her head a little. "Maybe, but sometimes… you just want to see other places, without putting in the effort to get there," she admits. "I take days off too, you know."

Deadman chuckles at that – could've fooled him. The only time he's seen her take a break was when she was on the brink of collapse. "I can certainly get you a chiraltorium file – do you have a shelter with a printer? Then I daresay it won't be difficult at all."

In the following days, the files for chiraltorium are downloaded several thousand times, as people all over go about converting rooms in order to get a fully immersive experience of browsing the Map. It has a clear effect both in the energy consumption and material demands – as well as the average of unhappiness, as people all over the country mark in their public calendars and blogs and whatnot that they had a good day or that they're generally feeling good. There's a sharp, nearly 400% rise in average happiness nationwide, and it's noticed.

Which, while not precisely the reason why Deadman had published the files, is rather the point. People all over their broken nation are doing what they can to experience the world outside, and it might only be by proxy of a hologram, it's still more than most of them have experienced in years.

Deadman thinks Sam would probably like it. Either that, or he wouldn't care one way or the other, really, but Deadman doesn't think the man would mind anyway. He hopes he wouldn't. Seeing the world through the eyes of Sam Porter Bridges… It does a lot of people a lot of good, bringing in fresh breath of air to a lot of closed up rooms.

And considering the rates of depression, anxiety, and a whole slew of other mental disorders that are plaguing their new nation… it couldn't have come a moment too soon.


End file.
